I've been healing holy paladin continuously since ICC, and have always stayed up-to-date on theorycrafting and such. After reading a lot of the newest discussion though I'm beginning to see two subtly different valid play/gear-styles:

I am the lead healer in a 25m guild that just got off the ground this patch, we just started heroic modes this week and killed hc Jin'Rokh in less than 10 wipes (yay!). We have a couple world-class dps, and some very skilled healers, so during our normal farm runs boss health has been melting quickly - we also have two Mana Tides. Due to this, I've been kind of getting away with gearing using the first strategy and a mix of the two healing strategies (i.e., I have 11.5k spirit and focus on mana management, but still get away with some superfluous HR spam for that extra yummy HP).

I've posted some really good numbers using my low spirit/high mastery build just due to being able to manage my mana really well and having lots of mana CDs from our comp, but I'm wondering if this will be possible to continue doing in heroic 25m content? I know for a fact I'll need to bump to at least 13.5k (which I'm doing tonight before hc Ji'kun), but is it necessary to switch to an all spirit mentality until you reach the too-much-spirit mark?

The most spirit-oriented my gear will get is gemming all int/mastery-spirit hybrids and pure spirit in blue/prismatic sockets, which will be probably a 2-3k swing off of my current setup (I already reforge Spirit > Mastery, although I think there's only a few items where that decision will even have to be made).

But yeah. I know I'll need more spirit in coming weeks, I'm just looking for insight. I've already read the holy paladin spirit thread, and probably most blogs you could link me to. I promise I'm fully educated on the spirit/mastery trade-off, I'm just looking for a tiny bit of tailored advice/specific commentary. Thanks!

It comes down to personal preference how you heal, ultimately you'll probably find that the lower spirit style is a bit more limited, but if you're able to do it without forcing yourself into melee much atm with the comp you have you should be fine, thats the biggest problem of that style, if you can get fights where you can melee a lot and take advantage of large strings of instants you can run crazy low amounts of Spirit

It comes down to personal preference how you heal, ultimately you'll probably find that the lower spirit style is a bit more limited, but if you're able to do it without forcing yourself into melee much atm with the comp you have you should be fine, thats the biggest problem of that style, if you can get fights where you can melee a lot and take advantage of large strings of instants you can run crazy low amounts of Spirit

Gotcha, that makes sense. You mention that the biggest fallacy of the style is that it often forces you into melee... I've found that being able to juggle meleeing for mana is something that takes time to do, but once mastered, doesn't really detriment my healing much (I use mouseovers, so that helps) and I can do it pretty much without thinking.

There's a couple times in normal modes where I find I'm not allowed in melee (P1 Iron Qon comes to mind), but generally I can get away with it. I'm guessing however, that you're mentioning it as a major downside because you can't get into melee range as often in heroics? That's the only reason I can think of why it'd be a bad dependency to have.

Gotcha, that makes sense. You mention that the biggest fallacy of the style is that it often forces you into melee... I've found that being able to juggle meleeing for mana is something that takes time to do, but once mastered, doesn't really detriment my healing much (I use mouseovers, so that helps) and I can do it pretty much without thinking.

There's a couple times in normal modes where I find I'm not allowed in melee (P1 Iron Qon comes to mind), but generally I can get away with it. I'm guessing however, that you're mentioning it as a major downside because you can't get into melee range as often in heroics? That's the only reason I can think of why it'd be a bad dependency to have.

Yeah, you'll find that most fights on HC don't allow you into melee, usually through a combo of fight mechanics and healing requirements, so ideally you want to be able to manage without relying on that, if you can do that at low Spirit levels thats great!

Hi, I feel I am am under performing in my current 10 man in Heroic content and routinely lag behind the other two healers. If anyone could have a look at logs and offer up some advice. I use an array of mouse overs and clique binds along with standard blizz frames.

Gear/Glyphs: Why are you using Glyph of Illumination? Why are you gemming red intellect gems?
Meta Gem: You don't appear to be tracking Lucidity
Personal CDs: You aren't using personal CD or raid CD's as much as possible. For instance, Tortos.

Spell usage seems fine but I haven't gotten to look at the details. Those should go quite far though.

Glyph, I have always been a HS spammer all through Wrath and Cata so I figured that the mana returns would out weigh the loss. Red gems....put some more uhmph into the heals, I started putting a few reds back into the slots to increase power of each cast after I reached a nice regen point.

I do find myself hanging on to Avenging Wrath and Divine Favor for a big push, I must force myself into a more liberal usage.

I will start tracking lucidity, I think at a point I had tried but had an issue with tellmewhen

Glyph, I have always been a HS spammer all through Wrath and Cata so I figured that the mana returns would out weigh the loss. Red gems....put some more uhmph into the heals, I started putting a few reds back into the slots to increase power of each cast after I reached a nice regen point.

At your spirit level you'll be losing thousands of spirit worth of regen by just using the glyph, theres only very specific points which the Glyph is even slightly worth it, and most of those are points at which fights are so short you don't want any RNG on your regen

I think you should go with as much spirit as possible (i.e. int/spi, spi/mastery, spi gems) until you're very comfortable with healing heroics. Alternatively as someone already suggested above, it's possible to run a low spirit build. What I do is to aim for 11-12k spirit, stacking mastery, running int flask. (int/mastery, mastery, spi/mastery gems) and possibly spi -> mastery reforges. You should be able to get VERY high number on illuminated healing, possibly 50% or higher. The downside is you have to know exactly when you're allowed to MELEE the boss for mana, as you'll definitely need to. But for example, Ra-Den is perfect for such build.

Hi, I feel I am am under performing in my current 10 man in Heroic content and routinely lag behind the other two healers. If anyone could have a look at logs and offer up some advice. I use an array of mouse overs and clique binds along with standard blizz frames.

Thanks

Looking at your logs, I have two things to say

1. You're running with a disc priest. This will automatically make your numbers seem lower than they would if you were running with another non-absorb healer.

2. CD usage. I went over a lot of your logs and I noticed that while you do use Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor, and Holy Avenger (on some fights for HA), you never use them as many times in a fight as you could use them.

But the most noticeable thing about your CD usage is that I didn't see a single instance of you using Guardian of Ancient Kings.

I can't really comment on your armory because you're in ret gear and your spec shows you using Sanctified Wrath and Execution sentence in your holy talent line-up---but your logs show that you use Light's Hammer and sometimes Holy Prism. I don't know what you run when you don't run Holy Avenger, because there are some fights where the logs don't show Holy Avenger at all, but I assumed it was Divine Purpose. If you're using Sanctified Wrath, ever, for 10mans, then you are doing yourself a disservice.

Got back to my pala since wotlk... Is judgement worth putting on my bars anymore? I see that some talents give you a buff if you judgement but im not using them atm. Does it work with seal of insight at all? Ie giving me some mana?

Got back to my pala since wotlk... Is judgement worth putting on my bars anymore? I see that some talents give you a buff if you judgement but im not using them atm. Does it work with seal of insight at all? Ie giving me some mana?

Nope, some fights make it useful but that can still easily be done with other abilities

Got back to my pala since wotlk... Is judgement worth putting on my bars anymore? I see that some talents give you a buff if you judgement but im not using them atm. Does it work with seal of insight at all? Ie giving me some mana?

I use it for Heroic Horridon and Heroic Tortos. That's pretty much it.

Selfless Healer is the worst talent in that tier. It has no interaction with Seal of Insight.